Coding Bootcamp Statistics 2026: 35+ Data Points on Outcomes, Costs, and ROI

I spent the last few weeks pulling every credible bootcamp statistic I could find. Not opinion pieces. Not Reddit rants. Actual data from CIRR-audited outcomes reports, Bureau of Labor Statistics projections, Gallup studies, Course Report market research, and NACE salary surveys.

Why? Because the bootcamp conversation online is a mess. Half the posts say bootcamps are the best thing that ever happened to them. The other half say it's a scam. Neither side uses real numbers.

You deserve better than that if you're deciding whether to spend $14,000 and 14 weeks of your life on one of these programs. So here's every number I could verify, with the source and year attached. If I couldn't find a credible citation, it's not on this page. Let's get into it.

The Coding Bootcamp Market: Size, Growth, and Scale

The coding bootcamp industry has grown from a handful of scrappy startups in 2012 to a multi-billion dollar market. But the growth hasn't been linear, and the market looks very different today than it did five years ago.

According to Research and Markets (via BusinessWire, December 2025), the global coding bootcamp market was valued at $2.65 billion in 2024, growing to $3.28 billion in 2025. They project it'll hit $14.07 billion by 2032, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 23.19%. That's aggressive growth, driven largely by corporate training partnerships and international expansion.

Course Report, which has tracked the industry since 2013, puts the U.S.-specific market at roughly $350 million in annual tuition revenue, with about 25,000 students graduating from full-time, immersive coding bootcamps each year (Course Report, 2025). That's just counting full-time programs. When you add part-time, self-paced, and corporate training graduates, Career Karma reported the total jumped from 176,912 in 2021 to 233,829 in 2022 to 292,585 in 2023 (Career Karma, 2023).

Here's what's interesting about those numbers. The market is growing but the industry is also consolidating hard. The number of bootcamp providers peaked and is now declining even as total revenue grows. The survivors are getting bigger. The weak ones are dying off. That's a classic maturation pattern, and it actually matters if you're choosing a program.

Course Report listed just 30 bootcamp programs when they launched in 2013. Today they list over 600. But that number masks a brutal shakeout happening underneath. Inside Higher Ed reported in January 2025 that the industry has seen a wave of closures: Southern New Hampshire University shut down its coding bootcamp in 2023, Portland-based Epicodus closed in early 2024 after enrollment fell amid tech layoffs, and Raleigh-based Momentum Learning's Triangle coding bootcamp closed for similar reasons (Inside Higher Ed, 2025). The most significant closure came in December 2024 when 2U, which had acquired Trilogy Education for $750 million in 2019, announced it was shutting down all its university-partnered bootcamp programs entirely.

"Simply put, the long-form, intensive training that boot camps provide no longer aligns with what the market wants and needs," 2U's interim CEO Matt Norden said in the announcement (Inside Higher Ed, 2025). Whether you agree with that assessment or not, it tells you something about the pressure the industry faces from cheaper alternatives, AI tools, and a tighter entry-level job market.

What Bootcamps Cost: Tuition, Financing, and the Real Price Tag

Let's talk money, because this is where most people start their research.

According to Course Report's 2025 data, the average bootcamp costs $14,142. That's for an average program length of about 14 weeks. Tuition ranges wildly though, from as low as $3,500 for part-time programs up to $30,000 for elite immersive programs. Data science bootcamps tend to run more expensive, with Switchup reporting a range of $12,000 to $20,000 for that specialization.

Course Report's data shows that the median cost (which is different from the average and less influenced by outliers) sits around $9,500 (DigitalDefynd citing Course Report, 2024). The reason for the gap between median and average? A few very expensive programs pull the average up significantly.

How are people paying for this? Nearly 80% of students rely on payment plans, loans, or Income Share Agreements to cover tuition (DigitalDefynd citing Course Report, 2024). ISAs were the hot financing trend for years: you pay nothing upfront and instead give a percentage of your salary after landing a job. But the ISA model has come under fire, with some programs charging revenue-share rates above 15% with uncapped payment periods. Several ISA providers have shut down or pivoted.

For context, let's compare the cost to traditional education. A four-year computer science degree at a public university costs roughly $10,000-$11,000 per year in tuition for in-state students. That's $40,000-$44,000 for tuition alone, and over $100,000 when you factor in living expenses, books, and opportunity cost. Out-of-state or private university? You're looking at $164,000+ total. A bootcamp at $14,000 is a fraction of that investment, and you're in the job market three and a half years sooner.

But cheaper doesn't mean better value. Value depends on outcomes. Which brings us to the data that actually matters.

Job Placement Rates: What the Verified Data Actually Shows

This is where the conversation gets heated. Bootcamps have been accused of inflating placement numbers since the industry began. That's exactly why the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR) exists. It's an independent, third-party organization that publishes audited outcomes data. CPA-verified. Standardized definitions. No cherry-picking.

Here's what the CIRR-verified data shows for 2024-early 2025 cohorts, as reported by Bay Valley Tech and corroborated by CIRR's published school data:

Let me be direct about what these numbers mean. A 64-78% in-field employment rate within 180 days is good but not amazing. That means roughly 1 in 4 to 1 in 3 graduates are not working in a coding job six months after finishing their program. Some of those people chose different paths. Some are still job hunting. Some gave up.

Course Report's broader survey found that 79% of all bootcamp alumni (not just recent grads) report being employed in programming jobs. The difference between the 6-month number and the lifetime number matters. Many bootcamp grads take longer than six months to land their first role, especially in a tough hiring market.

Switchup's data paints a similar picture: 72% of bootcamp graduates find jobs in their field within six months of graduation (DigitalDefynd citing Switchup, 2024). The numbers are consistent across multiple independent sources, which gives me more confidence in them.

But here's the thing that most statistics articles won't tell you: placement rates vary enormously by program. The top bootcamps and the mediocre ones are not playing the same game.

Top Bootcamp Outcomes: The Programs That Actually Deliver

Not all bootcamps are created equal. The gap between the best and worst programs is massive, and this is where most people get fooled by aggregate statistics.

Codesmith published their 2023-2024 CIRR-verified outcomes report, and the numbers stand out dramatically from the industry average. Their Full-Time Software Engineering Immersive showed 70.1% of graduates landing in-field roles within 12 months, with a median starting salary of $110,000 (Codesmith CIRR Report, 2024). Their Part-Time Immersive graduates hit a $120,000 median salary, though with a lower 60% in-field placement rate.

Compare that $110,000 median to the industry-wide CIRR median of $63,000-$71,000. That's a $40,000+ gap between a top-tier program and the average one. The program you choose matters more than almost any other variable.

Here's how the top programs stack up based on publicly available CIRR and self-reported data:

General Assembly reports around 96% of graduates finding jobs in their field after course completion (Career Karma, 2024). Flatiron School claims 90% job placement after graduation. Ada Developers Academy, a free program, reports 94% placement within six months (Bay Valley Tech, 2025). Bay Valley Tech, another free program, reports 88% placement within six months. And Thinkful historically places graduates at about $75,000 median salary (Conduct Science citing CIRR data, 2024).

The interesting pattern? Both the highest-paying programs (Codesmith, Hack Reactor) and some free programs (Ada, Bay Valley Tech) deliver strong outcomes. What matters isn't necessarily the price tag. It's the depth of career support: daily mock interviews, resume rewrites, employer demo days, and strong alumni networks. Bay Valley Tech's data explicitly shows this. Community programs that skip structured coaching average closer to 60% placement, while programs with active career services hit 88%+ (Bay Valley Tech, 2025).

Salary Outcomes: What Bootcamp Graduates Actually Earn

This is the number everyone wants to know. Let's break it down from multiple angles.

Course Report's 2025 data reports an average starting salary for bootcamp graduates of $69,000, with a median salary increase of 56% (roughly $25,000) compared to pre-bootcamp income. That 56% figure is one of the most commonly cited stats in the bootcamp industry, and it comes from surveying actual alumni.

Payscale puts the average annual salary for coding bootcamp graduates at $78,429, though they note software engineers and data scientists from bootcamps often command salaries above $90,000 (DigitalDefynd citing Payscale, 2024). Entry-level bootcamp roles tend to start around $60,000.

TripleTen's 2024 Outcomes Report found an average salary out of their bootcamp of $75,500 per year. And the Gallup-2U Boot Camp Graduates Study, which surveyed 3,824 adults who graduated from 2U-powered university bootcamps between 2016 and 2021, found that among graduates employed full-time, median salaries rose from approximately $59,000 during bootcamp to $70,000 after bootcamp. That's a median income growth of 17% (Gallup, 2022).

The CIRR data gives us the most granular view. Across all CIRR-participating bootcamps, the median starting salary for half of the 28 reporting programs was $75,000 (Conduct Science citing CIRR, 2024). But the range was enormous. Codesmith's New York branch reported $112,500 median starting salary. Hack Reactor San Francisco reported $109,000. Other programs fell in the $50,000-$75,000 range. Geography and program quality are the two biggest drivers of that variation.

Here's my honest take on these salary numbers: they're real, but they come with caveats. The $110,000 Codesmith figure is from an elite, highly selective program in a high-cost-of-living area. The $69,000 Course Report average is more representative of the typical bootcamp graduate's experience. If you're entering a bootcamp expecting $100K+ right out of the gate, you need to be either in a top-tier program or in a high-cost metro area. Possibly both.

Bootcamp vs. CS Degree: The Salary Comparison

This is the comparison everyone wants to see, and the data is actually pretty clear.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) projects the average starting salary for computer science bachelor's graduates at $76,251 for the Class of 2025, up 2% from $74,778 for the Class of 2024 (NACE, 2025). The overall average starting salary for all bachelor's degree holders across all majors was $65,677 for the Class of 2024.

The Gallup-2U study found something particularly interesting. When they compared 2018 bootcamp graduates to Department of Education College Scorecard data, the median bootcamp graduate without a bachelor's degree earned nearly as much ($55,000) in the year immediately after their bootcamp as the median computer science bachelor's degree graduate ($56,421). And bootcamp graduates with a bachelor's degree (the majority) earned about $5,000 more than their counterparts with just a CS degree (Gallup, 2022).

The real calculation isn't just starting salary. It's total lifetime earnings adjusted for time and cost. A bootcamp graduate enters the workforce three and a half years earlier than a CS degree holder. At a $69,000 starting salary, that's roughly $241,000 in earnings during those years. Even after paying $14,000 in tuition, the bootcamp graduate is $227,000 ahead before the CS graduate even gets their first paycheck.

Of course, CS degree holders tend to earn more over the long run and have access to certain roles (especially at large tech companies) that may require or strongly prefer a degree. The Stack Overflow 2024 Developer Survey found that 66% of professional developers have a bachelor's or master's degree. That said, only 49% of developers actually learned to code in school (Stack Overflow, 2024). Many degree-holding developers taught themselves the practical skills that got them hired.

Return on Investment: The Numbers That Actually Matter

ROI is where bootcamps look their strongest compared to traditional education.

The Gallup-2U study found that the median bootcamp graduate who worked full time during and after their bootcamp offset 59% of what their program cost them with additional income earned in the first year after graduation alone (Gallup, 2022). Compare that to a bachelor's degree, where recouping your investment in 10 years or less is considered reasonable. Bootcamp graduates are more than halfway to breakeven in 12 months.

Course Report data shows that 46% of bootcamp graduates achieve salary increases exceeding 50% after graduation. Nearly 40% experience a $10,000-$30,000 salary increase, and almost 30% see a $30,000-$50,000 increase (DigitalDefynd citing Course Report, 2024). For data science bootcamp graduates specifically, Course Report notes they typically recoup their program costs within 18 months due to strong demand and higher starting salaries.

Here's the ROI math for a typical scenario. You pay $14,142 for a bootcamp. You spend 14 weeks in the program. Your pre-bootcamp salary was $45,000 (roughly the pre-bootcamp median). Your post-bootcamp salary is $69,000. That's a $24,000 annual increase. You've paid back your bootcamp tuition in about 7 months. After that, every dollar of the salary increase is pure gain.

The salary bump also tends to accelerate. Bay Valley Tech reports that many bootcamp alumni see 40-60% raises after 12 months of real-world experience, closing or surpassing the initial wage gap with CS degree holders (Bay Valley Tech, 2025). Once you have a year of professional experience on your resume, your educational path matters much less than what you can demonstrate you've built.

Who's Attending Bootcamps: Student Demographics

The average bootcamp student looks nothing like the typical college freshman. That's by design.

According to Course Report's data, the average bootcamp student is 29 years old with 7 years of work experience. About 60% have at least a bachelor's degree. Around 20% are 35 or older. These are career changers, not fresh high school graduates. They've worked in other fields and are making a deliberate shift into tech (DigitalDefynd citing Course Report, 2024).

Gender diversity in bootcamps outpaces the broader tech industry. Course Report reports that 36% of bootcamp students are women, compared to roughly 25-28% of software developers overall (DigitalDefynd citing Course Report, 2024). Programs specifically targeting women and underrepresented groups, like Ada Developers Academy and organizations like Girls Who Code, have been pushing those numbers higher. Girls Who Code projects a 15% increase in female participation in data science bootcamps by 2027.

Forbes' survey data reveals that 75% of bootcamp students were working full-time while studying. Among those aged 18-26, 41% held a full-time job alongside their bootcamp program (Educate-Me citing Forbes, 2024). That stat tells you two things. First, most bootcamp students can't afford to not work during their training. Second, the part-time and self-paced bootcamp models aren't just convenient options. For many students, they're the only realistic option.

What motivates them? Forbes' survey found that skill enhancement and salary opportunities are the two top motivating factors, with 61.4% and 57.4% of respondents picking those two reasons respectively (Educate-Me citing Forbes, 2024). That alignment between motivation and outcomes is important. People go to bootcamps to make more money, and on average, they do.

Employer Perceptions: What Hiring Managers Actually Think

You can have perfect placement stats, but if employers don't respect the credential, none of it matters. So what does the data say?

Course Report reports that 69% of employers believe bootcamp graduates are qualified for tech roles. An even more telling stat: 80% of employers who have hired a bootcamp graduate say they would hire another one (DigitalDefynd citing SwitchUp and Course Report, 2024). That repeat hiring rate matters more than initial willingness because it reflects actual experience with bootcamp graduates, not just theoretical openness.

The Strada Public Viewpoint research found that 62% of Americans would prefer skills training or another nondegree option if they enrolled in a program within the next six months (Career Karma citing Strada, 2024). The cultural shift away from requiring a four-year degree for tech roles is real and accelerating. Many states have removed degree requirements for government tech positions, and companies like Google, Apple, and IBM have publicly stated they don't require degrees for many engineering roles.

But let's be honest about the limitations. Course Report data shows that 43% of bootcamp graduates find employment at startups while 32% secure positions at established tech companies (DigitalDefynd citing Course Report, 2024). If your goal is FAANG or a top-tier tech company, a bootcamp alone will face much steeper odds. Those companies receive hundreds of applications per opening, and while they may not officially require degrees, their interview pipelines and recruiter filters still heavily favor traditional credentials.

The Industry Shakeout: Closures, Consolidation, and What Comes Next

The bootcamp industry is going through its biggest shakeout since the Iron Yard and Dev Bootcamp both closed in 2017. Understanding why matters if you're evaluating programs right now.

The pattern is clear from the Inside Higher Ed reporting. Enrollment peaked during the pandemic years when online learning boomed and tech companies were hiring aggressively. Then three things happened simultaneously. Tech layoffs reduced the number of entry-level openings. AI tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT made some people question whether learning to code was still a smart bet. And a flood of cheaper alternatives, including free courses, microcredentials, and university certificate programs, started competing for the same students.

Ken Ruggiero, co-founder and CEO of Ascent Funding (a private loan servicer for bootcamp students), put it bluntly: "Then, the student type changed. There were only so many people who had a bachelor's degree and the time, skill and will to go through a program. They still existed, but there was a lot of competition for the same predictable student outcome, so people were fighting over that declining base of students" (Inside Higher Ed, 2025).

The survivors tend to be programs with genuine depth. Codesmith, which focuses on computer science fundamentals and produces graduates who can discuss technical trade-offs in depth, continues to post strong salary outcomes even in a brutal market. Their CEO Will Sentance noted that "the old models are falling short. Traditional computer science degrees are costly and slow to adapt. First-generation bootcamps, many of which focused on surface-level skills, are now collapsing" (Codesmith, 2024).

My prediction: the bootcamp market will continue to consolidate. The programs that survive will be the ones that either offer genuine depth (Codesmith, Turing, Hack Reactor) or genuine accessibility (free programs like Ada and Bay Valley Tech with strong career services). The middle tier, programs that charge $15K but offer mediocre career support, will continue to disappear. That's actually good news for prospective students. The average quality of surviving programs should increase as the weak players exit.

What the Stack Overflow Data Tells Us About Education Paths

The Stack Overflow 2024 Developer Survey provides some important context for the bootcamp conversation. Over 65,000 developers responded from 185 countries.

The education data is revealing. 66% of developers have a BA/BS or MA/MS degree, but only 49% of developers learned to code in school (Stack Overflow, 2024). That's a massive gap. It means that even among degree-holding developers, roughly one-third learned to code outside of their formal education through bootcamps, online resources, or self-study.

Online resources are the top choice for learning to code, selected by 82% of respondents. Technical documentation (84%) and Stack Overflow itself (80%) are the top online resources. And here's a new stat: 37% of developers say AI is helping them learn to code (Stack Overflow, 2024). That number will only grow.

What does this mean for the bootcamp question? It means that how you learned matters less than what you can do. The developer community has always been meritocratic in that sense. But it also means that bootcamps face increasing competition from free and AI-powered learning resources. The value proposition of a bootcamp is increasingly about the career services, peer community, and structured accountability rather than the curriculum content itself, which is increasingly available for free online.

The Honest Bottom Line: When Bootcamps Make Sense (and When They Don't)

I've looked at every data point I could find on bootcamps. Here's my honest assessment of what the numbers tell us.

Bootcamps make sense when you're a career changer with some work experience who wants to break into tech quickly. The data supports this. The typical bootcamp student, a 29-year-old with 7 years of professional experience and existing soft skills, is exactly the profile that bootcamps serve best. You're not competing with fresh CS graduates for the same roles. You're bringing a unique combination of domain expertise and new technical skills that many employers value.

Bootcamps make sense when the math works. If your current salary is $45K and a bootcamp can realistically get you to $69K in six months, spending $14K on tuition is rational. You'll recoup the cost in about seven months of the salary increase. That's a far better ROI than most educational investments.

Bootcamps don't make sense when you pick a mediocre program without doing research. The gap between a top-tier bootcamp (Codesmith's $110K median) and a poorly run program ($50K median or worse with low placement rates) is too wide to ignore. CIRR-verified outcomes data exists for a reason. Use it.

Bootcamps don't make sense if your target is a FAANG-level company straight out of the gate. The data shows 43% of bootcamp grads work at startups and 32% at established companies. Breaking into Google or Meta from a bootcamp is possible but statistically rare without additional work building a strong portfolio, contributing to open source, and developing computer science fundamentals beyond what most bootcamps teach.

And bootcamps increasingly don't make sense if you have the discipline to self-teach. With free resources like freeCodeCamp, The Odin Project, and now AI-powered learning tools, the curriculum portion of a bootcamp is less valuable than it was five years ago. What you're really paying for is structure, accountability, career services, and a community. If you can provide those things for yourself, you can save $14,000.

For a deeper analysis of the bootcamp decision, check out our full guide: Is a Coding Bootcamp Worth It in 2026? For salary benchmarks to set your expectations, see our Software Developer Salary Statistics 2026. And if you're considering the job market you'll graduate into, our Developer Job Market Statistics 2026 has you covered.

Data Sources and Methodology

Every statistic on this page comes from a named, verifiable source. Here's a complete list of data sources used in this research:

Council on Integrity in Results Reporting (CIRR) is the only independent, third-party organization that publishes audited bootcamp outcomes data. Their standards require 100% of students to be accounted for, with roles verified through graduate reports or LinkedIn validation. CPA-audited. Data cited covers 2024-2025 cohorts.

Course Report has tracked the bootcamp industry since 2013. Their data comes from surveying actual schools for graduation data and conducting independent alumni surveys. They provide market size estimates based on full-time immersive program data only, not part-time or intro courses. Data cited from their 2025 Ultimate Guide.

National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) provides employer-reported starting salary data for college graduates. The Class of 2025 salary projections cited here come from the Winter 2025 Salary Survey.

Gallup-2U Boot Camp Graduates Study (2022) surveyed 3,824 adults who graduated from 2U-powered university bootcamps between 2016 and 2021. It compared their earnings to Department of Education College Scorecard data.

Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2024 collected responses from over 65,000 developers across 185 countries. It provides education, salary, and career data for professional developers worldwide.

Research and Markets / BusinessWire (December 2025) provides global coding bootcamp market size data and growth projections through 2032.

Career Karma State of the Bootcamp Market Report (2023) tracked 105+ coding bootcamps, providing graduate counts, enrollment trends, and market share analysis.

Inside Higher Ed (January 2025) provided reporting on bootcamp closures, industry consolidation, and the structural forces reshaping the market.

Additional sources: SwitchUp (job placement data), DigitalDefynd (aggregated bootcamp statistics), Codesmith CIRR Outcomes Report 2023-2024, Conduct Science (CIRR data analysis), Bay Valley Tech (placement data and industry analysis), Coherent Market Insights (market share data), Payscale (salary data), TripleTen (outcomes report), Strada Public Viewpoint (education preferences), Forbes/Educate-Me (student demographics), and Girls Who Code (diversity projections).